THE NEW FRONTIER OF SCIENCE: Are scientists still thinking with their eyes?

SEPARATION The separation of science fiction from real knowledge was a very slow and dangerous process in a world were the universities and governments, churches and religions, believed that science was the knowledge of observable things that were self evident, in other words unquestionable and factual because they could be seen and explained by observation and ideas that agreed with them.

SCIENCE FICTION In the past the belief that perceptions, - what we see - and ideas about them, - what we think, - were identical, agreeable and logical, was taken for granted. This illusion formed the basis of all scientific knowledge. But the philosophy of science was deficient in understanding the relationship between a thing and an idea. A thing has a formal existence external to what is observed of it. It exists in space, exists whether we look at it or not, and is known by its mass, motion, weight, and shape. Thus our forefathers saw the sun moving around the earth because of their position in time and space which they did not see, nor were aware of and they believed the earth was flat because they did not see it from another position in time and space. They believed the earth was the centre of the universe because of their inability to separate a thing from the idea they had of it.

WHAT WE ACTUALLY SEE So much has been written to prove that a thing exists or is true because we see it. But the eyes have been given an extraordinary place in the philosophy of science out of all proportion to what the eyes actually see compared with what the eyes do not see. This is because sight is believed to be the power of seeing things, whereas the eyes cannot see anything but colour. Colour is what separates visible things from invisible, not light. Light is, in fact, invisible but has the property of colour within its rays. Similarly things we call material objects have the property of colour and it is this that makes them visible. Without colour we cannot see anything. If you have ever walked into a glass door you will realise why. Glass has no colour. Often birds fly into the glass windows of our home, and not infrequently knock themselves out. Without the property of colour we would be blind. It is colour that makes the difference between visibility and invisibility. Colour gives form and shape to matter, if by matter we infer a corporeal substance from its appearance in time and space. But what we actually see is what an artist sees when he paints a picture and uses colour to give shape and form, light and dark, to what he creates. Colour is how, in reality, things appear to our perception of things we believe are there exactly as we perceive them.

COLOUR AND CHANGE It is colour that indicates change in the seasons of the year. The colours of spring are very different than the colours of autumn and winter. It is colour that indicates health or illness in the eyes, the skin, the nails and the tongue. A physician bases his diagnosis of an illness on colour. It is from the colour of body organs that we describe a person’s eyes and face as jaundiced or flushed, because these colours indicate a liver problem or a fever. Thus we say a person’s skin is very pale or blue, grey or white because colours indicate different conditions of health or illness. Everyone knows how illness alters the way we look. What is visible to our eyes is a pallor of the face indicating sickness, or a redness indicating high temperature, or blue skin indicating lack of oxygen. Colour is an indicator of disease and death. So colour interacts with biological, chemical and organic matter and without colour we would not know what a chemical is, or a body. That is how important and revealing colour is, for it is not just an accidental appearance that has no relevance to what it colours but is an intrinsic face of life and reality. Colours are an important appearance and indicator of chemical reactions. Litmus paper which is blue will turn red when brought in contact with an acid liquid. Pinella will turn pink when brought in contact with vinegar. The various changes of colour in chemistry are numerous. Colours then are indicators of other properties whether chemical or biological.

THE PROPERTIES OF MATTER Colour is a property of matter, not only the property of light. If that is hard to believe just imagine everything without colour. The universe and everything we know in it would not be visible. We would be blind and unable to see anything. Just as we cannot see glass or space or water, all of which are colourless, so we would not be able to see the sun, the moon or the stars. We would not be able to see each other. We would be blind. Why is it that an artist can paint a picture of nature, places, things or people? Is it not because he uses colour to create form, shape, size, foreground and background with colour and lines? Without colour he could paint nothing. He could make nothing visible or recognisable, for even a line or a circle must have a colour to be seen.

IS SCIENCE BELIEVABLE? Without colour there could be no science, and no knowledge of anything visible, observable or measurable, whether in time or space. But invisible matter is a real possibility if all we see is coloured matter. There are many things we don’t see like gravity or space. A new language is springing up in space such as black matter and black holes. These are names not used before because black has been associated with space without sunlight, yet these are necessary terms if a sun’s gravity is to be explained where it appears that a sun’s planets would break away from their orbits, because a sun is too small, having less gravity, to keep planets orbiting it. The colour black has a new meaning in space if black matter is a fact.

WHAT IS INFERENCE? Whatever we feel, touch, see, hear, taste or smell is a perception, or a combination of perceptions. What we think about these perceptions is the idea we have of them. If this is true then science is not only what is observable but what is inferred from observable things. Inference is the way we connect these things together. For instance we infer or imagine a link between one thing and another. This inferring is the operation of reason which we call an hypothesis or guess. To test an hypothesis we must show that the link between things is factual, real and not imaginary. For example, scientists in the 16th century saw that the earth was flat. They inferred that the sun goes under the earth and back over the earth every day. They saw with their eyes that the sun moved so they imagined that the earth does not move. But these are perceptions and ideas are unrelated because what they saw and what they inferred from what they saw was a common illusion and misconception. For thousands of years seeing was believing and this was believed to be science or knowledge.

MIND METHOD AND SCIENCE Nevertheless, there is a correlation between ideas and perceptions, - between ideas and things, - that is rational and believable, because reason is the order and ordering of ideas despite their juxtaposition in time and space. It is possible to separate a thing from the idea we have of it by comparing it with other things in time, space and motion, and by imagining alternative explanations. This is very difficult to do and can only take place if we have an open mind and recognise that knowledge is much more than observation and the presupposition that seeing is believing. For any knowledge to grow it is necessary to distrust, doubt and question the fallibility of the five senses and to recognise that our position in time and space is rational not accidental.

theory may still be with us.

THE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE The real foundation of science is the intuition that the world is inseparable from mind, reason and creation. Ancient civilizations recognised intuitively that the world is not an accident. The Chinese word for world or universe is yuzhou of which the principle character yu, a word meaning a building. Chinese philosophers, especially Confucius recognised that a universe could not exist without a Builder. The Greek philosophers used the word Logos to explain the origin of the world, a word meaning the principle of reason. The Hebrews believed the universe to be created by the Word of God that which orders and brings the world into being, for God’s Word is reason, power and truth. Are we wandering too far in our ‘natural science’ only to be like astronauts lost in space? I believe it is time to acknowledge the little we do know and make amends for claiming too much. All Rights Reserved (c) Selwyn PerryPublished 17th April, 2013.Author of Mind Matter and Method